Good Burger at 20: Stale material, evergreen memories

The authoritative Rotten Tomatoes has never made better use of its name than when it weaved together its verdict on Good Burger.

The Paramount movie, which hit theaters 20 years ago Tuesday, catalyzes a stark divide in tastes. There are the unripe kid viewers from the time of its release, and then there are the seasoned critics of the same era.

There are those reluctant to relinquish their fondness for ’90s nostalgia (guilty as charged). Then there are those who reluctantly accept what they consider foul-flavored films as part of their profession.

At present, the film boasts a 32 percent score on the Tomatometer. Conversely, it enjoys an audience approval rating of 63 percent.

Based on the site’s conclusion, some spoiled produce slices would fit right into a metaphorical helping of the movie’s namesake sandwich. As the aggregator assesses, “Good Burger might please hardcore fans of the 1990s Nickelodeon TV series that launched leads Kenan and Kel to stardom, but for all others, it will likely prove a comedy that is neither satisfyingly rare nor well done.”

Under the same page’s “movie info” heading, there is the slightly harsher characterization of “Sunny, terminally silly farce” and the implication that the film’s sole demographic is “the pre-teen age group that loves its Saturday night sitcom on Nickelodeon.”

That’s all fair enough. But as those former preteens now hover around age 30, Good Burger’s legacy no longer stems from subjective entertainment value. It juts in history as the peak of a youthful comic tag team whose unison enjoyed a shorter span than it seemed to at the time.

As of this summer, Kenan Thompson is on the cusp of Saturday Night Live history, poised to begin his record 15th season on the NBC sketch show. His tenure had already broken another sheet of ice in that, at the time of his 2003 hiring, he was the first SNL performer younger than the program itself.

His former Nickelodeon batterymate, Kel Mitchell, tried to share the latter distinction, but failed his simultaneous tryout. With that, three years after Kenan & Kel closed its curtain and less than a decade after the two first worked together on All That (Nick’s own SNL), the two effectively lost hope for a partnership reboot.

Maybe that was for the better. While Mitchell has since wallowed in comparative obscurity, he and Thompson both needed to prove they could succeed independent of one another.

While only one has become a bona fide big-leaguer, so to speak, both have sustained a career in entertainment. Their respective paths since their partnership represents the two essential ways one can go when they try to build on a radiant highlight from their formative years.

Any time a youth, scholastic, junior or college sports team wins a title, retrospectives on those moments come with the inevitable “Where are they now?” query. For the creators and stars of a kid-oriented program, just getting the greenlight for a mainstream movie counts as one of those moments. And from Good Burger’s roster, Thompson is the fortunate future A-lister while Mitchell one of the more numerous pluggers.

But they each still had their mainstream theatrical project at the halfway mark of their six-year alliance. Adapted from Mitchell’s signature All That routine, Good Burger was a timely hook for amplifying Kenan & Kel’s audience for the latter show’s then-upcoming second season.

The sketch show, sitcom and cinema project all bore the fingerprints of Dan Schneider. The common threads among the characters speak to the way the two young stars found their niches for forming a double act.

You might say that, in the Schneider-verse, Chicago’s Kenan Rockmore and Kel Kimble had unknown Southern California doppelgangers in Dexter Reed and Ed (No Surname), respectively.

Rockmore and Reed are both consciously daring wiseacres. Kimble and (No Surname) are both recklessly daring, but also dispense their wisdom in timely spurts, generally in desert-rain intervals. (Not to mention, in an obvious network plug, both also have a fondness for orange-colored consumables, be it soda or sauce.)

Ed and Kel’s recklessness have a way of precipitating or exacerbating a conundrum for Kenan or Dexter. When that happens, a timeless lament of “Whyyyy??!” is in order.

But in fairness, Rockmore and Reed are usually already engaged in an activity they should have refrained from in the first place. The film character’s case is driving a parent’s car with no permission and no license. The TV protagonist’s deeds range from trying to obtain his own auto while underage to sneaking into the school’s picture development room.

Though there is no hard data to gauge it, this author’s own recollections can attest to the way Good Burger helped make Kenan & Kel appointment viewing on Saturday nights from the second season onward. During that sophomore year, the show even appeared to test the young audience’s attentiveness when, in a post-show wrap after the title tandem squandered their chance to cameo in an action film, Kenan simply suggested, “We should star in our own movie!”

They just had, in one way, and they would again in another way after the sitcom’s senior season. For some reason, the minds behind Kenan & Kel decided to distort that show’s reality with a bizarre TV movie, Two Heads Are Better Than None, as its series finale.

That was the summer of 2000, a time at which the two stars were officially crossing into adulthood. But maybe they should have gone back to the West Coast doppelgangers and adapted the book-only sequel, Good Burger 2 Go, as their parting project. What they did instead only reminds us of when and how the ’90s died before its children’s eyes.

Regardless, Good Burger remains a top testament to when and how the ’90s lived for its children in the form of two of its ultimate child stars. It was when the viewers dreamed and the performers and producers actively emulated SNL’s film-making habits. Before only one of those stars actually made it to SNL.

On that note, could someone fetch some rotten ketchup for the ’90s preteens table?